On October 30, 2024 Raven & Gryphon Fine Books celebrated its 7th anniversary. Our on-line listings on Abe state “Abebooks seller since October 30, 2017”. We sold our first book on April 18, 2018 “Michelangelo” off to NYC for US$50.
Our revenue and inventory have grown steadily over the seven years and for our year ended August 31, 2024 we enjoyed our highest revenue to date. And the current year is off to a great start.
We have four principal avenues when it comes to selling our books.
On-line via Abebooks
This is our largest and steadiest sales outlet. Abe is the largest on-line rare book platform. They are based in Vancouver and a few years ago were purchased by Amazon.
I tend to provide much more in-depth descriptions of books that are posted, minimum $50, and almost always with the maximum of five photos per listing. It takes more time, but I think it is worth the effort.
Customers in the bookstore
We need to do more to encourage visitors to our bookshop. To this end, we changed “by appointment only” to “open by chance”. Doesn’t sound so formidable. We have also been trying to make our business more visible on the internet. Just last week, I got a phone call on Friday
from a gentleman who wanted to visit our shop, and he did the next day. He bought MacAskill’s “Lure of the Sea”. I asked how he found Raven & Gryphon Fine Books and he said he went on-line and poked about. Progress!
Freyja
Visitors had always been welcomed by our book savvy Belgian Shepherd Freyja. As they browse, she would lay on the carpet in front of the bookcases and occasionally stroll over to our guests for a scratch behind her beautiful ears. She is at rest now, buried on our property that had been the only place that she had lived since she was a few weeks old.
A wonderful friend of mine, Stuart Hampton, a retired medical doctor is a passionate artist and who also loved Freyja – evidenced by his home-made treats that he brought her every visit. He painted a portrait of Freyja that now hangs on the wall on the stairwell to the bookstore.
Helping clients build collections
I very much enjoy this activity and always feel a sense of satisfaction when these clients thank me for finding their treasures. Collecting interests have included Stephen King, Star Wars, Canadian Prime Ministers, European photography and ancestry.
Antique and Craft Fairs
We regularly do two fairs – The Scarecrow Antique Fair in Mahone Bay and Christmas at the Forum in Halifax. Both went into mothballs during COVID and in 2022 Mahone Bay was wiped out by Hurricane Fiona. My friend Gary Humphries attends these fairs with me, and you can get a glimpse of him in the photos above, one from 2022 and one from 2024. We are getting much better at knowing what sells at these venues and how to group and display the books. We proactively dicker and did not bother charging HST – it is only 5% and I put it in after the show is over. Keep it simple and friendly.
We made a significant change this year, evident from the photos above. We stopped bringing the bookcase. Customers very seldom looked in the bookcase and we were using it more for table inventory replenishment. And what a pain securing the bookcase on top of the vehicle before and after the show. And we started to put more books on the tables, often piles of three or four. The most attractive ones on top – but we changed them frequently. And there are always one or two books that attracts people to stop and shop. Last year it was a Maud Lewis Christmas book and this year a Disney Song Book and an illustrated “A Christmas Story”. We almost hated selling those dust jacket magnets!
Appreciation
The success Glenda and I are having with our book business is very much dependent on the fine work contributed by Renée Gruszecki, who looks after our website and postings there and in Facebook, and to Gary Humphries who is my partner in crime at the fairs and who is becoming quite the charming seller of books. And to you, the readers of my musings and to our customers.
New this year – My Muse Sabrina
Sabrina lives on the shoreline of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia. She has been there for a long, long time. She doesn’t get around much, but she enjoys being in the salt water. She changes her hair style twice a day and changes her glasses to fit the weather conditions and her temperament.
I walked past Sabrina almost every day for the past twenty some years, first with Gryphon and then with Freyja, our wonderful Belgian Shepherds. Now, I walk by Sabrina by myself.
She started to reach out to me just over the past couple of years. I started to stop and look at her beautiful hair and she started to respond to my attention by planting thoughts in my head. Good thoughts, encouraging thoughts, stimulating thoughts, influential thoughts. She has become my muse. Although, I must confess some days she is stone-faced and refuses to talk to me. Thankfully, not often.
